Power, Lost and Found: America At Century’s End 529Augusto Sandino, a national hero killed by the government and U.S. marines
in the 1920s] brought down the corrupt U.S.-backed government of Anastasio
Somoza. The Sandinistas created literacy and environmental programs,
expanded social welfare, and tried to redistribute wealth to some degree. But,
once in power, the Sandinistas sought economic and military help from the
Russians because of attempts by Carter and then Reagan to remove them.
Worse still, from an American foreign policy standpoint, the Sandinista gov-
ernment sent aid to the FMLN in El Salvador. Consequently, Reagan approved
covert aid through the CIA to a counterrevolutionary, if not terrorist, force
opposed to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua called the Contras. Under the “Reagan
Doctrine,” the President was determined to support the Contras in their
battle against the Sandinistas. To Reagan, the Contras were “the moral equiv-
alent of our Founding Fathers.” In reality, they attacked villages, assassinated
media and local officials, and killed nuns, often with U.S.-supplied weapons
and always with Reagan defending them and increasing aid.
As the CIA supported Contra training in neighboring Honduras, mined
Nicaraguan harbors, and even issued an assassination-training manual to
Contra rebels, Congress became determined to push the nation toward disen-
gagement from the internal affairs of other nations. After winning a majority
in the 1982 election, Democrats in Congress moved to severely restrict the
Administration’s ability to fund the Contras by passing the Boland Amendment.
This meant little to Reagan, who instructed his National Security Adviser,
Robert McFarlane to “do whatever you have to do to help these people [the
Contras] keep body and soul together.” So instructed, the National Security
Council [NSC], banned from openly sending aid to the anti-government para-
military groups in Nicaragua, solicited contributions from private donors and
other governments to bring down the Sandinistas. Congress responded in
1984 by making covert aid to the Contras essentially impossible by also pro-
hibiting the Administration from using non-American funds to support the
Contras.
In the interim, Reagan found a place to express his foreign policy in the
tiny Caribbean island-nation of Grenada. In October 1983, under the guise of
rescuing American medical students “trapped” by a new Marxist government,
Reagan authorized Operation Urgent Fury. With a force of about 10,000, the
government of Grenada was defeated and the students were “saved.” Despite
United Nations’ condemnation and the criticism of allies, the American people